Debugging Teams: Better Productivity through Collaboration

by Brian W. Fitzpatrick

At Google, one of our favorite mottoes is “Failure is an option.” It’s widely recognized that if you’re not failing now and then, you’re not being innovative enough or taking enough risks.

What we mean by “consensus” is that everyone has a strong sense of ownership and responsibility for the product’s success and that the leaders really listen to the team (with an emphasis on the “respect” component of HRT).

people start reading email in a meeting because they probably don’t need to be in the meeting in the first place.

Great engineers also demand great team leaders, because crappy leaders not only tend to be too insecure to deal with great engineers, but also tend to boss people around.

Traditional managers worry about how to get things done, while leaders worry about what things get done…(and trust their team to figure out how to do it).

Fitz treated Jerry like an adult, Jerry always got his work done, and Fitz never had to worry about Jerry being at his desk, because Jerry didn’t need a babysitter.

These very same people will also consistently impress you and make great things happen. They’ll be able to direct themselves to a much greater extent, and some will be eager to lead the team as well. You shouldn’t see this as an attempt to usurp your power, but rather as an opportunity for you to lead an additional team, investigate new opportunities, or even take a vacation without worrying about checking in on the team every day to make sure they’re getting their work done.

A common saying at Google is that if you try to achieve an impossible goal, there’s a good chance you’ll fail, but if you fail trying to achieve the impossible, you’ll most likely accomplish way more than you would have accomplished had you merely attempted something you knew you could complete.

This procedure is a way to document the events that led to the actual failure and to develop a series of steps that will prevent it from happening in the future. This is not an opportunity to point fingers, nor is it intended to introduce unnecessary bureaucratic checks; the goal is rather to focus strongly on the core of the problem and fix it once and for all.

A former manager of Fitz’s would tell new team members, “I won’t lie to you, but I will tell you when I can’t tell you something or if I just don’t know.”

To get all of your team members into the sweet spot, you need to motivate the ones who fall into the “In a rut” portion of the matrix, and provide stronger direction to those who are in the “Look! Squirrel!” portion.

Dan claims you can increase intrinsic motivation by giving people three things: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

A good Three Bullets and a Call to Action email contains (at most) three bullet points detailing the issue at hand, and one — and only one — call to action.